Eleven ways to make the most of Twitter's education chatter

Twitter may not, in fact, be the revolutionary professional-development tool that many people believe it to be, one academic says

Susan Graves, a senior research fellow at Edge Hill University, has been analysing the social-media site – including who follows whom – and speaking to headteachers about how they use it.

At the British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society conference this month, she argued that Twitter reinforces teachers’ pre-existing beliefs, while encouraging them to think that they are gaining in-depth understanding of issues.

“Twitter is almost a requirement for headteachers now,” she said. “There is a feeling that, if they aren’t on social media, then they are missing out. But everyone seems to follow the same people. They chose those people because they already had a profile on social media. They’d be tweeted and retweeted.

“Does that mean that people rise to the fore not because of the quality of their ideas, but because they’re able to market their ideas in a way that chimes with social media?”